A Raucous Scene for Alternative Rock

By NANCY HARRISON

Published: April 26, 1992

AT a club named Siberia in Levittown, the disk jockey plays music by obscure bands like Skinny Puppy and Mr. Bungle. Dancers are decked out in motorcycle jackets, combat boots and asymmetrical haircuts. Just about the last place you would expect to find an alternative-music club like Siberia is in a shopping center on Hempstead Turnpike.

Combining rock, punk, heavy metal, dance, pop and rap, alternative music defies convention. Considered too experimental for top-40 radio, the music thrives on the airwaves of college radio stations and some commercial outlets, including WDRE-FM in Westbury.

For the most part alternative rock lives in college dormitories and in progressive clubs in cities like New York and Seattle. But it has also found an audience on Long Island, where an increasing number of clubs have gone "underground."

"Young people on Long Island are bored, and they want something different," said the disk jockey at Siberia, Eddie Lentini.

Open since November, Siberia joins a list of new music clubs on the Island. They include Voodoo in Deer Park, Malibu in Lido Beach, Industry in Island Park, Spize in Farmingdale and Ugo's in Locust Valley.

Siberia is open on Friday nights. The rest of the week the club is known as Spit and features the more widely popular mainstream music. Moshing and Swimming

"New York City definitely had a strong influence in creating the scene here," the program director of WDRE, Tom Calderone, said, adding that Long Islanders liked what they saw in the downtown club scene in New York City and brought it home.

But what is accepted in Manhattan can be controversial on Long Island. Although a violent dance known as moshing goes unnoticed in city clubs, it has gained wide attention at Siberia. Young people thrash about the dance floor, purposely bumping into one another. Occasionally someone is lifted and passed from person to person, which is known as swimming.

Christian Meserino, 18, of Westbury, who has been moshing for three years, said: "I know people who have broken arms or legs, but it is not dangerous. If someone falls down, you help pick them up."

Alternative music, said Steve Kass, 23, of Brooklyn,is the anthem of a generation that is disillusioned with society. Mr. Kass is a disk jockey at WDRE and is also the announcer at Siberia.

The message is at times political, at times social, and always anti-establishment, he said. The statement is made not only through the music, but also the fashion. Black is the color of choice, he said, and the more outrageous the outfit, the better.

Donna Valenzano, 23, of Queens, a regular at Siberia, wears a black skintight jump suit and black leather jacket. "We are saying be who you want to be," she said. "You don't have to conform if you do not want to."

"We are worried about the environment," Mr. Kass said. "We are worried about AIDS. We are worried about war." 'We Are Not Going to Sell Out'

He drew a parallel between the 1960's and the 1990's countercultures. "We have similar ideals," he added. "But they let them go when they hit 30. We learned from their mistakes. We are not going to sell out."

Steve Katsur, 19, of Westbury, noted another difference. He glanced at the dance floor and said, "Most of us here do not do drugs."

On a recent Saturday night at Spize, the dancing was more mainstream, but the music was not. Situated across Route 110 from Republic Airport, Spize says it was the first alternative club on the Island.

When it opened 10 years ago, Spize offered live national acts including R.E.M. Now the club features a disk jockey who books local acts about 20 times a year. "It just got to be too expensive," the owner, Raymond Monahan, said.

Jay Jahrsdoerfer, an artist from Port Jefferson, sat at the bar. At the age of 38, he estimates that he is one of the oldest customers in the club. Mr. Jahrsdoerfer wore a black sleeveless T-shirt and black jeans under his shoulder-length hair. "I've been listening to alternative music for 10 years," he said. "It's guttural. It's dark. For me it speaks to this basic restlessness that I have."

The DJ plays Ministry and New Order, bands that have national followings. Lynda Page, 21, of Bethpage, shakes her head in disgust. "How alternative can you get?" Wearing her hair cropped short and in a skintight black miniskirt, she commented: "Everything has been done, from Satan to death. There is no such thing as alternative anymore." Industrial and Other Divisions

Alternative music evolved out of the punk movement of the late 70's, said Robert Haber, who owns The College Music Journal, known as C.M.J., in Great Neck. The company publishes The New Music Report, a weekly newsletter that reports on alternative bands and tracks trends at college stations.

Mr. Haber said alternative music was divided into industrial, a derivative dance music; punk funk, a combination of heavy metal and punk; hard core, a variation of hard rock, and ska, a version of reggae.

In 1982, WDRE, known then as WLIR, switched from playing progressive music to alternative rock. Denis McNamara, who was the program manager, engineered the change.

"We had done a survey and found that there was a segment of the market that was not being served," Mr. McNamara said. "We decided to take a chance and play bands that did not get air play."

The gamble, he said, paid off. WDRE is the sole alternative station in the New York metropolitan region. It can be heard on Long Island and in Manhattan, New Jersey, Connecticut and Westchester County, and a recent survey ranked it the 16th most-listened-to rock station in the country, Mr. Calderone said.

"There were local clubs experimenting with alternative nights in the early 1980's, but the music really took off when the station switched formats," Mr. McNamara says.

Some record stores specialize in alternative rock. They include Slipped Disk in Valley Stream, Ray Reed in Lynbrook and Uncle Phil's in Massapequa. Store owners say business has picked up since Nirvana, a national act, achieved commercial success. Contract for Phantom Tollbooth

Most alternative bands start out on small labels like Homestead Records. Homestead is one of three record labels operating from an office building in Rockville Centre. The others are Rockville and Strange Fruit. Only one Long Island band, Phantom Tollbooth of Plainview, has ever been signed to any of the three labels.

"The scene on Long Island just does not support the type of music we are doing," the manager of the Homestead label, Ken Katkin, said. "The bands tend to be too commercial for us."

When they start out, alternative bands receive air play on college stations, Mr. Haber said. On Sunday nights the "Left of Center" program on WDRE plays records by new bands on independent labels. Otherwise, the station plays the music of more established acts, Mr. Calderone said. Scatterbrain of Hicksville is the lone Long Island band to receive regular air play on WDRE.

Local bands perform at small nightspots like Ugo's and Scandals in Merrick. The larger clubs like Siberia and Malibu tend to book national acts. Strong Presence on College Radio

Alternative rock dominates college radio, including WUSB-FM at the State University at Stony Brook and WBAU-FM at Adelphi University, Mr. Haber said. Most unknown alternative bands are played on college stations, he added.

On the club scene, Ugo's, next to a used-furniture store and across the street from a country club, occupies the ground floor of a house. With its trophies, wood paneling and pinball machine, Ugo's looks more like a college bar than an alternative club.

On a recent Saturday night Eddie Havoc and the Savage Ohms were on the bill. The band is one of many from Long Island. Others include the Chiselers, Sea Monster and the Vicious Beatniks. War and Traffic on the L.I.E.

Combining punk and folk, the Savage Ohms perform their own material, which addresses issues from pollution to war to traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Now six months old, the band is searching for a record contract with a small label.

"It is tough," Mr. Havoc, 34, of Glen Cove said. "Record-company representatives do not make it out to Long Island too often. And we are not booked in the city much, because the clubs there don't think we can draw an audience."

Members of the Savage Ohms do not earn sufficient money from their music, and they have day jobs. Mr. Havoc, the lead singer, works in his family business. The drummer, Mark McColl, 32, of Flushing, runs the audio-visual center at the Institute for Relationship Therapy. The guitarist, Tommy Woods, 31, of Roslyn, manages the accessory department at Record World.

"But we won't give up," Mr. Havoc said. "All we want to do is play music."

Photos: The scene at Siberia in Levittown, where "moshing," above and left, is practiced. (Photographs by Michael Shavel for The New York Times)